


Other Cities Don't Know Me

by elven_enchantress



Category: Common Law, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Crazy Alien Shenanigans, Crossover, In which I invoke every SGA trope ever, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-27
Updated: 2012-05-27
Packaged: 2017-11-06 02:33:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/413769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elven_enchantress/pseuds/elven_enchantress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Atlantis isn't good for your health, except for when it really is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other Cities Don't Know Me

**Author's Note:**

> I have been threatening to write this fic for ages, and here it is. If you have no idea what Stargate Atlantis is, I'd suggest you do a little research; this might not make a whole lot of sense otherwise.
> 
> Title from the song 'Curse This City' by Hockey. Rating is mostly for language.

They’ve been in therapy for half a year when they get the call.

“So, it would appear that someone other than this district needs your crazy asses for justice.” The Captain informs them after he’s dragged them into his office. “Now, I dunno what exactly is going on. Just got a ring from an old friend up in Colorado, told me to send my two best detectives up to Cheyenne Mountain, in their supposedly ‘top secret base’.” 

He rolls his eyes. “Not much of a secret, if you ask me. Everyone from here to Iowa knows they’ve got some alien science hoodoo down there, and they like to pretend they’ve got it on lockdown. Whatever, it doesn’t matter to me if the military keeps secrets about as well as my wife keeps her pants on when we listen to those new intimacy—”

Travis puts his hands over his ears and starts singing the theme song to the Reading Rainbow extremely loudly while Wes looks determinedly at a spot five inches above the Captain’s head.

The Captain coughs. “The point is that you two need to be down there by tomorrow, so pack your bags. Your flight leaves in five hours.”

Wes nods sharply. Travis opens his mouth to protest, because _dammit_ , he had a date tonight and he was pretty sure that getting laid was a higher priority for every male being in existence than whatever shit the Colorado base has gotten themselves into, but before he can make this extremely reasonable protest Wes has snatched him by the elbow and dragged him from the room.

“No man, see, this is not being friends.” Travis whines, fully aware that his tone isn’t helping his case. “Friends is letting the Captain know that there’s a very important reason to not fly out to the boondocks tonight—”

“You said, and I quote, ‘I revoke our friendship’ exactly three hours ago on the dot, so I’m pretty sure I don’t have to follow whatever rules you’ve spontaneously created.” Wes’s mouth is quirked at the corner, which tells Travis that Wes thinks this is all really hilarious, probably because it is causing Travis emotional pain, and there is nothing Wes likes better than seeing Travis in emotional pain.

“Well, you were being a jackass. You kept me from shooting that douche who double parked next to me, even you could see he deserved a bit of maiming. I mean, he was probably drunk and disorderly too, we could’ve brought him in, but no, you said, no terrorizing ordinary citizens.”

“Your kind of terrorizing involves shooting off firearms at the general populace, so I’m pretty sure I made the right call on that one.” He lets go of Travis’s arm and cuffs him on the head, which is sort of the equivalent of a bro-hug in Wes’s ‘I am so repressed’ body language. “Just think of all the pretty girls in Colorado who don’t know how much of a man slut you are.”

Travis perks up. “Hey, yeah, I hadn’t even thought about that. And please, you wish you could be as good a man-slut as me. Your insults just roll off my back dude, I am like the most handsome of ducks.”

“Does that mean you won’t drown if I throw you in a river? Because that means I’ll have to cross out another one of my Ways to Exterminate Travis in a Cunning Manner.”

“Oh wow, you think you’re so clever, that right there is why I have revoked your friendship privileges—” 

“Stop talking before we miss our flight, and pack your bags.”

“…You pack _your_ bags!”

Wes just snorts and turns to carefully pack up the small fern he keeps at his desk. Travis scowls and wonders whether it’s worth the trouble to cancel his date or not.

~

That was about a week ago.

A week later, they’re running up and down the halls of an actual alien settlement called Atlantis, because sure, why not name it after a city where lots of mythical people drowned—clearly the military had made the call on that one—and they are being chased by an actual genuine alien. Who also wants to suck the energy from their bodies.

Yeah, Travis isn’t really sure when this became his life either.

“Let’s go to Colorado!’ you said! ‘They’ll be lots of hot chicks!’ you said.” Travis throws himself down and manages to avoid the blast that the alien—Wraith—had shot at him. “Well, we’re down lots of hot chicks and up one homicidal alien race, so I think I get the right to say that you made a Very Bad Call on this one.”

Wes covers him as he slides over to the doorframe and Travis manages to get the stupid city to listen to him and closes the door. And wow, okay, another thing on the list of things he’d never actually thought he’d say—communicating with a sentient object.

“It’s a good thing you have the gene, or we’d probably be husks by now.”

Travis laughs, except it’s not really a happy sound. “Yes, isn’t it lovely how I have some strange thing in my DNA that enables me to talk to a city that is really fucking stubborn, how awesome is that?”

There’s a loud pounding on the door, and they both turn around to see what a possible exit strategy might be. The room is pretty small, with doors on opposite sides.

Travis looks at Wes and grins the grin of the reasonably insane. “I still have one left on the belt that crazy ass Marine handed me.”

Wes tries to frown and fails miserably. “That could work.”

~

That incident comes to be known as “The Great Grenade Debacle”, and the city doesn’t forgive Travis for at least a week after, and he has a very hard time getting it to let him out of his quarters. 

Things don’t settle down after that.

~

They’ve been in Atlantis for about three months working as a small crime control division when someone called McKay blunders into their headquarters and demands to know who ‘moronically destroyed the east corridor’. Wes stands and they have an intense three minute conversation about some weird markings on the walls before Wes chivvies McKay out the door.

Travis doesn’t see either of them for the next two days, and when Wes finally surfaces McKay has informed all the staff of his new and insanely intelligent theory concerning the Atlanteans’ plumbing.

After that Wes disappears for two hours every Saturday, and when Travis asks him about it suspiciously, he shrugs.

“I like chess. McKay thinks I’m less of an idiot than three quarters of his subordinates. It works out.”

“I can see how you’d get along with an anal egotistical maniac.” Travis deadpans, and Wes throws a stress ball at his head. 

~

The one and only time Travis attempts to hit on Teyla Emmagan goes something like this:

“Hey, you been working out lately? Your abs look more perfect than usual.”

Stony silence.

“Okay, hey, I can work with that, strong and silent type, that’s cool. Bet you’re loud sometimes though—okay, _ow_ , stop, no, I get it, _please_ don’t break my arm—”

Suffice to say, Travis keeps his distance from Teyla for a while after that, especially when hulk of a guy called Ronon takes to following him down the corridors while fingering his gun meaningfully.

That was a really traumatic couple of weeks.

~

After six months on Atlantis, they team up with Sheppard’s gate team in order to help with a possible assassination attempt directed at a minister on a friendly planet.

To say it does not go well would be a bit of an understatement.

No one likes to talk about it afterwards, and the mission report is so classified that almost no one is qualified to read it. Those who are pretend it burned in a freak office fire.

~

(Travis thought the minister looked extremely guilty, so he and Sheppard decided the only reasonable solution would be to interrogate him at gunpoint.

While Wes and McKay simultaneously freaked out, loudly and offensively, in the corner, they discovered that the minister had kidnapped one of the royal princes, and it only got worse from there on out.

By the end of their little adventure, Travis had managed to mortally offend the Queen Regent, who then tried to hold Wes as her sex slave in order to spite him. Ronon had extracted a life debt from the Heir Apparent, and McKay was banished from the planet indefinitely until he could ‘Find the heart of obsidian to restore the Glass of the Future’, while Teyla was inducted as a Duchess for Services to the Crown. Sheppard managed to get a ballad written about him; no one’s exactly sure how that happened, Sheppard included.

The mission report states succinctly: DO NOT RETURN TO PLANET P-1245 UNLESS NO OTHER OPTION. IF NO OTHER OPTION, FIND ANOTHER OPTION. QUICKLY.)

~

They’re nine months into their stay when Atlantis decides to force people it deems ‘genetically compatible’ into rooms together for a day.

Travis spends 24 hours trying not to be incinerated by Ronon’s death glare, and mostly fails horribly. 

He sees Wes and McKay exiting together from their respective cell and doesn’t particularly like the twist in his stomach. Sheppard’s watching from the other side of the corridor with a dark look on his face, and Travis wonders if he’d like to go shoot something. Sheppard is usually up for shooting something.

~

A few weeks after Atlantis tried, and failed, to play matchmaker, they end up on a planet where the flowers emit some strange, sticky substance.

“I knew it!” Travis exclaims happily, poking one of the flowers and rubbing the yellow stuff between his fingers. “I knew we’d get to see sex pollen someday, it’s like required for alien planets.”

Wes coughs and rubs his nose on his elbow. “It’s not sex pollen Travis, stop getting so excited.” He sneezes out yellow dust. “Also, learn the definition of personal space please—whoa, no, stop, your hand doesn’t belong there—”

Half an hour later, they’re disheveled, half-naked, and using Wes’s pack for a pillow.

“That _so was_ sex pollen. I win.”

Wes smacks his chest lazily. “You don’t win anything, idiot. It wasn’t a bet.”

“Oh, I think I should get a prize or something. For being right.” Travis wiggles his eyebrows meaningfully.

“So you admit you’re wrong most of the time?”

Travis doesn’t think that question merits an answer, so he decides to make Wes stop talking. The sexy way.

Later, when they get back to Atlantis, surprisingly with most of their clothes intact, Travis tells Sheppard to avoid P-569 because of the sex pollen.

Sheppard blinks. “Oh, you mean those giant flowers? Yeah, that’s not sex pollen. It’s more like an adrenaline enhancer. Sort of removes your inhibitions, so you do things you normally wouldn’t.”

Wes stiffens from across the room, and Travis ignores the hole that has suddenly opened in his stomach. He focuses on Sheppard instead, because that’s a hell of a lot easier than tangling through emotions. “How do you know that?”

Sheppard turns an interesting shade of beet red. “Um. There was an incident. A while ago.”

“An incident, huh?” Travis eyes him suspiciously, and tries to not notice the way Wes is doing everything but running from the room, because that will lead to more Emotions. Travis and his Emotions are not friends right now. “That ‘incident’ wouldn’t have anything to do with how McKay refused to go on gate missions last month, would it?”

Sheppard is the second person to exit the room at a near-sprint, but it doesn’t exactly make Travis feel better.

~

The next month mostly involves Wes doing his best to escape the room when Travis enters it. Wes needs to get over his Travis-phobia right now though, because the Wraith decided it would be a good life choice to invade Atlantis again, and they’ve actually got to talk to each other if they want to get out of this alive.

Actually, that statement isn’t really uncommon nowadays. Travis really, really hates his life.

“Now would be a great time to pull out the surprise belt full of grenades.” Travis has Wes’s head in his lap, which is weird, but also kind of nice. It would be nicer if Wes didn’t have a piece of metal embedded in his thigh, but you couldn’t have everything.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure after the Incident That Shall Not Be Named, they took all my access to grenades away.”

“You mean the time where Queen Bianca—”

Travis tuts and puts his hand over Wes’s mouth. “The Incident Shall Not Be Named for a reason, dude. I’ll forgive you for the memory relapse because you’ve lost a lot of blood and you’re probably delirious, but it’s the only time you get a free pass.”

“Thanks ever so for your generosity.” Wes deadpans, and coughs. There might be blood, but Travis is trying not to focus too much on that. “So. Got any plans?”

“Not really.” Travis shrugs, and decides that sticking his palm on the pad near them and asking Atlantis for a bit of help can’t make anything worse. He feels a little perk of attention, and about ten seconds later there’s a series of very loud explosion from outside the door.

“Travis, what did you _do_.”

“Not my fault this time, it’s all Atlantis.” He strokes the panel lovingly. “She just gets me, man. It’s nice to know the sentient city you live in wants to keep you alive.”

“Right. That’s great. I hope you two are very happy together.” Wes’s tone is sarcastic, but there’s an edge of underlying bitterness that Travis knows all too well, and it makes him stop thinking about all the ways they could die painfully in the next few minutes.

“So I’m thinking there’s probably a reason you’ve been avoiding me for the past month.” 

“Really. You want to talk about this now? When we’re in the middle of an actual alien invasion?” Travis just stares at him, eyebrow raised meaningfully. Wes rolls his eyes and drags Travis’s head down to his, and whispers something in his ear.

Travis tries not to cry, and laughs hysterically instead. “And you couldn’t tell me that instead of playing an extremely one-sided, never-ending game of Hide and Seek because—?”

“Because you’re an idiot.” Wes chokes out, eyes sliding away.

Travis says “That can’t be your answer for everything” and leans down to kiss him, hard, because fuck those Wraith. He’s been missing out on a month of extremely athletic sex for no reason at all, he deserves a reward.

They’re too busy making out on the floor to notice when the Wraith stop invading and start dissolving on the floor awhile later because McKay has done something Exceptionally Brilliant with Science, and saved the city.

To be honest, they don’t really care.

~

They get about three weeks of uninterrupted bliss before there’s an inter-planetary case involving mass-identity theft that calls for their urgent attention.

It’s not much different from before, except for all the spur of the moment sex in closets, and the warm feeling Travis carries around along with his firearm.

~

Sometime later they wake up to the bright Saturday morning light shining through the windows. Travis thinks about how long it’s been since they were on Earth. He pokes Wes in the stomach, grinning when he twitches away from the touch. Wes, it turns out, can be extremely ticklish in the right circumstances.

“You ever miss L.A.?”

Wes eyes him sleepily, lids half closed to block out most of the sunlight. “Not really.”

Travis smiles, stupidly, and pounces on Wes. He plans to make an early start to their Saturday and he’s pretty sure Wes will be amenable to that.

After all, he hasn’t complained so far. Travis hopes it’ll stay that way.

~

It does.

**Author's Note:**

> So yes. That happened. Um. Sorry?


End file.
